Re: Please welcome . . .

On Saturday, December 13, 2003, at 12:25 AM, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 09:20:29AM +0000, Peter Bleackley wrote:
>>> Have you considered The Experiment yet? By which, of course, I mean
>>> raising
>>> him to be bilingual in a conlang. Were I in your position, I think I'd
>>> have
>>> to consider giving my child the advantage of a native understanding of
>>> Lojban -- or possibly Maggel ;-)
>
> I'm going to attempt raising him bilingual in  English and Spanish despite
> the fact that my Spanish is non-native.  That'll be enough of a challenge.
>  :)
I know a French family that did something similar - and with a fair amount
of
success.  The mother always spoke to the two kiddies in French and Dad
always
spoke in English (with a French accent!).  It worked best with the elder
boy,
who got to stage where he was translating what one parent said for the
benefit
of the other parent!

It all fell apart the day the lad discovered his dad understood French.
The boys
then used French all the time.  But by that time they'd had a grounding of
English
and, with encouragement, a secondary knowledge of English was maintained.
>
>> Someone tried that with tlhIngan Hol. The child rejected it at the age
>> of 3.
>
> I remember that.  I wonder why the child rejected the language?    Does it
> violate some universal that made the kid reject it as a valid language,
> or did he pick up something from the attitude of those around him
> indicating
> that they didn't treat it seriously?
Possibly - but when he picked up that his dad understood English, he would
'naturally' switch to English for both parents; and if there was no other
re-inforcement for tlhIngan Hol, it would soon drop.

My two grandsons were brought up bi-lingually: their mother is French and
their dad is English.  My wife, whose French is fluent, also spoke to them
in French.  But they live in an anglophone milieu in the anglicized part of
south-east Wales, so the language they hear around them everyday is English
and, again, when they realized both parents understood English (my son's
French is small!), they adopted English as their L1.

But French continues to get re-inforced,, partly by the fact that their
other
grandmother has no English.  The elder boy will speak French when he has
to -
the younger one is loath to speak the language but clearly understands it.

So - yes, there's no reason why young Connor Sebastian shouldn't be
bilingual.
Good luck!

Ray
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